On 2/15/2012 1:50 PM, Matthew Brett wrote:
> I believe that leaving the governance informal and underspecified at
> this stage would be a grave mistake, for everyone concerned.
To justify that concern, can you point to an
analogous case, where things went awry by not
formalizing the governance structure?
Can you provide an example where a more formal
governance structure for NumPy would have meant
more or better code development? (Please do not
suggest the NA discussion!)
Can you provide an example of what you might
envision as a "more formal governance structure"?
(I assume that any such structure will not put people
who are not core contributors to NumPy in a position
to tell core contributors what to spend their time on.)
Early last December, Chuck Harris estimated that three
people were active NumPy developers. I liked the idea of
creating a "board" of these 3 and a rule that says any
active developer can request to join the board, that
additions are determined by majority vote of the existing
board, and that having the board both small and odd
numbered is a priority. I also suggested inviting to this
board a developer or two from important projects that are
very NumPy dependent (e.g., Matplotlib).
I still like this idea. Would it fully satisfy you?
Still, honestly, I have trouble seeing how implementing this
idea would currently have much affect on the substance or
extent or direction of the conversations about NumPy.
Thanks,
Alan
PS Just to jog the group memory, Travis announced more than
four months ago *on this list* that he had "been approached
about the possibility of creating a foundation to support
the development of SciPy and NumPy", and had become
interested in creating a "Foundation for the Advancement of
Scientific, Technical, and Engineering Computing Using High
Level Abstractions (FASTECUHLA)", and had created an open
discussion list for this at fastecuhla@googlegroups.com